Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, Republican leadership will soon unveil legislation representing yet another attempt to undercut Medicare. As they did last year, my Republican colleagues will try to coopt the prescription drug needs of Medicare beneficiaries to secure fundamental changes, privatization, in the way they receive coverage. My Republican friends will use stand-alone drug coverage as a lever to try to privatize Medicare. The irony is that their proposal is being marketed as a kinder, gentler take on Medicare reform. Kinder and gentler, that is, than the President's breathtakingly callous ``let them eat cake'' approach.

You have got to give the President and Republicans credit. By playing good cop, bad cop, they are poised to set the clock back 38 years to the beginning of Medicare, 1965, and force seniors back into the private insurance market for their coverage. It is a shining moment for compassionate conservatism.

The President acclimated Congress and the public to the most irresponsible of Medicare privatization gambits by proposing to force seniors who need drug coverage out of Medicare and into HMOs. Blatantly exploiting the most vulnerable seniors to achieve the purely ideological goal of Medicare privatization is so offensive, in fact an egregious breach of the public trust, that virtually any alternative would look good in comparison.

When Republicans announced they planned to reprise their stand-alone drug plan proposal, everyone applauded because at least seniors would not be, as the President wanted initially, forced out of Medicare altogether in order to get drug coverage. Unfortunately, there is more than one way to gut Medicare, and the Republicans have found it. You can force seniors into HMOs, you can coerce seniors into HMOs, you can lure seniors into HMOs. You can, as my Republican colleagues are proposing, require seniors to buy stand-alone private prescription drug plans if they want drug coverage. It would be difficult to come up with a less efficient, less reliable, or more costly way to deliver drug benefits than to build an individual market for them. Yet that is what they are proposing.

The only reason to manufacture this new insurance market is to privatize Medicare. Here is how you do it: you give seniors two options. They can juggle traditional Medicare, plus a supplemental policy, plus a stand-alone drug coverage; or they can join a private insurance plan that offers all three. Once you sweeten the pot by offering enhanced preventive and catastrophic benefits at more cost under the private plans, you have effectively set traditional Medicare up for failure.

Make no mistake about it. Every Member of Congress who votes for the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug coverage plan is voting for Medicare privatization. You know and I know that seniors will not be better off choosing between and among private insurance drug plans just as they have not been better off choosing between this Medicare+Choice HMO or that Medicare+Choice HMO. Health insurance is not like a car. You do not customize it to fit your life-style. Good health insurance covers medically-necessary care delivered by the health care providers we trust. Bad insurance simply does not. Good health insurance lasts. Disappearing health plans and shrinking benefits are the hallmarks of the private insurance experiment that is already part of Medicare, Medicare+Choice. Instead of alleviating uncertainty, Medicare+Choice plans breed it.

Proponents of privatization argue Federal employees have a choice of private health plans, but the fact that FEHBP, the Federal program, features lots of private health plans does not mean it is a better system than Medicare. Federal employee health plan premiums grew 11 percent in 2003. Social Security income grew by 4 percent. Seniors earned $14,000 on average last year. There is not much cushion in that for unpredictable premium increases as you will get under privatized Medicare.

Let us not forget that my Republican friends want to means-test Medicare benefits. So goes the coverage guarantee. So goes Medicare's practical value to every enrollee regardless of income. And so goes popular universal support for the program that we know and respect, known as Medicare. If the Republicans' prescription drug coverage plan is signed into law, Members of Congress who voted for it will be able to look back and take credit for undermining a popular, successful, public insurance program that covers 40 million people and that ensures your parents access to reliable, high-quality care and replacing it with another iteration, another experiment of the failed Medicare+Choice program.

I do not know how any Member of Congress, Mr. Speaker, can look their constituents in the eye after voting to sabotage a public program, Medicare, that anchors the financial security of our Nation's retirees. I hope a majority of us will stand up for Medicare and block any attempt, covert or overt, to destroy it.

Mr. Speaker, It is my privilege to pay tribute to the life of Joanne Carlin, a lifelong resident of the Cleveland area, who died on May 14 after a courageous battle against cancer.

Joanne's giving spirit was shaped by her experiences growing up in Cleveland's Tremont area. A product of St. Augustine Catholic School, she eventually moved to Garfield Heights, where she graduated from high school.

Joanne owned and operated a beauty salon on Cleveland's west side. Her former customers praised her as a loyal and generous person.

She later sold her business and moved to Medina County to become a full-time homemaker. An excellent cook, Joanne enriched the lives of her family and friends as the consummate hostess during family gatherings and holidays.

Our hearts go out to her husband and best friend, James; her four stepchildren and three stepgrandchildren; and legions of family and friends who recall the memories of these gatherings and the tremendous influence Joanne had in their lives.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to pay tribute to the life of Joanne Carlin, a lifelong resident of the Cleveland area, who died on May 14 after a courageous battle against cancer.

Joanne's giving spirit was shaped by her experiences growing up in Cleveland's Tremont area. A product of St. Augustine Catholic School, she eventually moved to Garfield Heights, where she graduated from high school.

Joanne owned and operated a beauty salon on Cleveland's west side. Her former customers praised her as a loyal and generous person.

She later sold her business and moved to Medina County to become a full-time homemaker. An excellent cook, Joanne enriched the lives of her family and friends as the consummate hostess during family gatherings and holidays.

Our hearts go out to her husband and best friend, James; her four stepchildren and three stepgrandchildren; and legions of family and friends who recall the memories of these gatherings and the tremendous influence Joanne had in their lives.

Mr. Speaker, I condemn the attacks by Burma's brutal military regime against 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi (Chee) and her party, the National League for Democracy.

The NLD and its members are the rightfully elected leaders of Burma. For 13 years the military rulers of Burma have suppressed their people and ignored the results of the 1990 elections.

Burma's military regime must not be permitted to attack, murder, imprison, and torture its people with impunity.

Now is the time for the United States to increase pressure against this regime. Now is the time for Congress and the administration to ban imports from Burma and freeze their assets.

I am disappointed in the silence of the Asia Bureau at the U.S. State Department over the past month.

While human rights groups have sought to bring to their attention the need to increase pressure on this regime, the Bureau has done nothing.

Now Miss Kyi (Chee) is once again being illegally detained against her will, ``for her own protection,'' as the military has termed it. The Asia Bureau sticks to its indefensible position of doing nothing.

Now is the time for Congress to act.

Mr. Speaker, PhRMA, the lobbying shop for America's drug companies, has a problematical condition. It is suffering from that most debilitating of special interest deficiencies: sickly message. PhRMA has to come in with a straight face and tell public officials: if you support efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs, we will not have the resources to develop the next generation of miracle medicines.

Now, anyone who knows even a little about the drug industry knows that that argument does not hold water. We know that with profit margins consistently pushing 20 percent, the drug companies are the most profitable industry in America for 20 years running. They have the lowest tax rate in America. Half of all the drugs developed in this country, half of all the research and development for drugs in this country is done by taxpayers. But without a shot in the arm, PhRMA, the drug industry's lobbying arm, PhRMA's case of anemic message might result in an acute loss of profits.

Fortunately for the drug industry, it has found a miracle cure of its own, a very effective drug called money, and they are using it to change the way America thinks. Here in Washington you see the drug companies' money everywhere. They spend untold millions on high-priced inside-the-Beltway lawyers to tell the administration and Congress that State initiatives to control drug costs violate the law by putting Medicaid beneficiaries at risk.

And they spend big money, really big money to sell this message to Congress and the White House. The drug companies spent over $70 million lobbying House and Senate Members during the last election cycle. They spent almost $90 million on political campaign ads. They know where their bread is buttered. They know who their friends are. Almost 90 percent of their campaign spending was on behalf of Republicans. And they were especially generous to President Bush in his 2000 race and already for his 2004 race.

And by any standard, the money that drug companies have spent on Republicans is well spent. Rather than use its influence to bring down prices in the United States, the Bush administration, infused with all kinds of drug industry campaign dollars, is using its power to prevent Americans from purchasing the same medicine in Canada for one-half, one-third, and one-fourth the price. The Medicare prescription drug bill passed last year by the Republican-led House does nothing to curb the ever-escalating price of drugs. In fact, the Republican bill throws more money, more government dollars, more taxpayer funds at the drug companies.

For the 1\1/4\ million people in my State of Ohio without health insurance, and for the tens of millions throughout this country, the problem is not whether the giant multinational drug companies will be able to afford to develop another version of Viagra or another ``Me Too'' drug. For working Ohio families and seniors struggling to make ends meet, the problem is they cannot afford the drugs that are available today.

In Ohio, as in other parts of the country, seniors have grown tired of waiting for the Federal Government to address the high price of prescription drugs. They know they cannot count on President Bush, who receives millions of drug company dollars. They know they cannot count on the Republican leadership. The Ohio Coalition for Affordable Drugs wants to let the citizens of Ohio decide for themselves; and PhRMA, the drug industry's lobbying arm, is pulling out all the stops to block their plan.

Millions of Ohioans would benefit from this plan. Savings are estimated as high as 50 percent. That is why PhRMA is working so hard to make sure the proposal never makes it to the ballot in Ohio. PhRMA sued over the language of the proposal. After that failed to stop the initiative, they challenged petitions trying to get people's signatures disqualified because they had moved or because they have not voted for a couple of years.

But the complete absence of a valid argument has never slowed the drug industry's friends down. No, PhRMA marches relentlessly on in its efforts to derail the Ohio prescription drug savings issue. PhRMA plans to spend $16 million, more than the total amount of money spent on the Governor's race last year in Ohio. The drug industry plans to spend $16 million to keep the issue off the ballot; and if it gets on the ballot, millions of dollars to defeat it. That is money they did not spend researching medical breakthroughs. It is money they are not spending helping families afford the latest generation in miracle drugs.

No, the drug industry is spending that $16 million to delay and to deny the citizens of Ohio an opportunity to exercise their right to vote on whether prescription drug prices should come down. PhRMA is not engaging in a debate or arguing against the merits of

the plan; they are smart enough to know a losing campaign when they see one. Instead, they are trying to get the election called on a technicality.

PhRMA, the drug industry, and the Republicans are counting on PhRMA's money, the miracle pill that has worked before, to make its problems go away. I do not know if that trusty remedy will work this time. There is a growing understanding in Ohio, and I think there is throughout the country, that when push comes to shove the drug industry's priority is profit, not patient safety. If the drug company's real priority is patient safety, why are they spending so much money to ensure that we cannot afford the medicine that so many of us need?

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans passed a bill last week which will provide a $90,000 tax cut to the Nation's millionaires, but let us look at what else it does.

The independent Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that making the earned income tax credit marriage penalty relief effective this year would have offered an average tax cut of $340 to 4 million working American families. But the President decided to make them wait until 2008 for the marriage penalty relief he offered their more affluent neighbors. House Republican leadership had several opportunities to correct the President's mistake and restore fairness to the tax bill, but they decided to cut working families loose. So that is $90,000 for millionaires, not a cent for working lower-income families.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, said, ``If you are not going to incentivize marriage, at the very least make sure you don't punish it.'' The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the House majority leader, said, ``A country founded on freedom should not maintain a tax code that arbitrarily places an extra burden on husbands and wives.'' Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), said, ``We need a tax code that doesn't punish married couples. They don't need the Federal Government picking their pocket.''

$90,000 for a millionaire, but nothing for married, poor, or working families.

Any one of those powerful officials could have taken a stand, could have spoken up for low-wage working families, could have ensured that no legislation would pass this House that valued the marriages of families of wealthy Americans above those of their less affluent neighbors. But none of those Republican leaders said a thing. None of them raised a voice of concern or lifted a finger to stop the advance of a bill that says loud and clear to millions of Americans, your marriage is worth less than your neighbor's marriage or your boss's marriage.

$90,000 of tax cuts for a millionaire, but not a cent for low-income working couples.

Given that track record, it was disappointing, but not surprising, to learn the White House and the congressional Republican majority used their last-minute back-room deal in the tax bill to take another cheap shot at low-wage working families. The final conference bill brokered by Vice President Cheney included a last-minute change that freezes 12 million low-wage families out of the bill's child tax credit increase.

$90,000 for millionaires, nothing for working families, lower-income working families.

At the signing ceremony for this bill, the President said, ``We are helping workers who need more take-home pay.'' But 7 million American families who pay income tax will get no benefit at all from this bill.

$90,000 for millionaires, nothing for low-income families.

Now that the word is out, some of our Republican colleagues are saying they did not know about these changes. They are looking for someone to blame for the decision to cut low-wage working families loose on the child tax credit. But the deal was cut by the Vice President and his party's leadership, so the ``I did not know it'' excuse just simply does not wash.

If the White House had wanted to correct the injustices in the tax bill, if Republican leadership had been serious about fairness for married couples and children, there were plenty of opportunities. They could have dropped the average tax cut for millionaires, like the President's friend, Enron's CEO Chair Ken Lay, from $93,000 to $88,000, and that would have left enough money to give that tax break to working families.

They could have dropped the dividend tax cut that the President and Vice President worked so hard for, just over 2 percent, and the capital gains provision cost just 2 percent; and that would have paid for those lower-income working families who do pay taxes.

So they could have offset the cost by including some responsible corporate tax loophole reforms. We all know corporate expatriates like Tyco and Stanley use loopholes in the law to abandon their U.S. headquarters and reincorporate overseas. So they give tax breaks to them, they give tax breaks to millionaires, but not a cent for so many low-income working families in this country.

The simple truth is this was not a mistake. Any Republican Member of the House who thinks it was should listen carefully to today's statement by their elected majority leader. Asked about the prospects for legislative proposals to restore just some fairness, just a bit of fairness to the child tax credit, the majority leader, DeLay, said, ``There is a lot of other things that are more important than that.''

Mr. Speaker, $90 million for millionaires, not a cent for working, lower-income families. It is shameful.

Mr. Speaker, Members may have read in this morning's Roll Call about the personal videotape President Bush sent urging Republicans to seize the moment and overhaul Medicare. Even though privatization will increase costs and degrade the quality of coverage that seniors receive, the President unapologetically is promoting Medicare privatization.

Medicare is enduringly popular with most Americans, including Main Street Republicans; but Medicare is a thorn in the side of conservative extremists. They call it Big Government.

For the majority of Americans who value Medicare, the problem is that those same extremists are now in power. They are using tactics familiar to anyone who has followed the history of another public program, Federal Rail Service. For years, conservative ideologues in office have underfunded Amtrak, the passenger rail system. As train service declines, conservatives insist that Amtrak deserves less funding. Even though every nation in the world subsidizes its public transportation, Congress inadequately invests in and dutifully undermines our national rail system.

In their unrelenting 20-year-old effort to privatize Medicare, begun during the salad days of the Reagan administration, the far right has honed the Amtrak strategy to a science: underfund Medicare; make it more inflexible and bureaucratic; cut basic consumer service functions; lure, then coerce, seniors into private insurance; set this popular program up for failure; then blame any failures on the fact that it is a public program.

When Medicare was enacted in 1965, only 22 Republicans in the House and Senate supported it. Bob Dole, Republican Congressman, voted against it. Donald Rumsfeld, a Republican Congressman, voted against creating Medicare. Gerald Ford, a Republican Congressman then, voted against creating Medicare. Senator Strom Thurman, a Republican Senator then, voted against creating Medicare.

Then in 1995, when the GOP majority had its first chance to reform Medicare, Speaker Gingrich, predicting that Medicare would wither on the vine, attempted to cut $270 billion from Medicare to make room, get this, for several hundred billion dollars of tax cuts. Sound familiar?

Then came Mediscare. This GOP campaign, launched in the late 1990s, aimed to convince Americans that Medicare is going broke and the only way to save Medicare is to turn it over to private investors. Medicare, they call it Mediscare, Medicare is no more at risk of going broke than is the Defense Department. They are both funded with public dollars.

Forcing Medicare beneficiaries into private insurance plans will not reduce Federal outlays. Per capita spending on Medicare is lower than that on private health insurance, and has been lower than the supposed ``efficient'' private health service for 30 years. But the push to privatize Medicare has never been grounded in facts; it is an ideological campaign, pure and simple.

Republican leadership simply does not like Medicare. The idea of luring seniors into private health plans grew out of the Medicare+Choice experiment. The +Choice debacle started out innocently enough. The theory was HMOs could operate much more efficiently than traditional Medicare, so they could provide both basic and enhanced benefits for less than the traditional Medicare plan.

It did not work out that way. By selectively enrolling the healthiest seniors, HMOs earned a windfall on the taxpayers' dime. Eventually, that windfall was outstripped by the cost of providing extra benefits. HMOs turned around and asked Congress for more money. The Republican Congress then poured more money into these private managed-care plans, which never covered more than one-sixth of the population, leaving less for the 86 percent of seniors who are enrolled in traditional Medicare.

In other words, Republicans invest more in seniors who agree to join private plans than in six-sevenths of the people in the Medicare plan who stay in traditional Medicare.

President Bush has embraced the Amtrak strategy with even more abandon than his predecessors. Get this: he has proposed establishing a new Medicare prescription drug benefit, but only for seniors who agree to leave traditional Medicare and join private HMO insurance programs. While promoting additional dollars for HMOs, President Bush has taken steps to cut Medicare's already-meager operating funds, to curtail its consumer service functions, and to restrict coverage for medical breakthroughs.

Then Republican leaders in this and the other body dutifully berate Medicare for being inefficient, for being unresponsive, and for being too slow to adapt to 21st century medicine. The Republicans should be ashamed. Medicare has withstood a 30-year Republican effort to dismantle it, but this President is pulling out all the stops. He is preaching Medicare insolvency, he is engaging in Mediscare tactics, he is selling private plans, he is undercutting traditional Medicare, and he is managing traditional Medicare into the ground.

Before the Bush administration privatization train leaves the station, American seniors and those who care about them need to blow the whistle.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) for their work and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) and the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) their tripartisan effort tonight to point out some of the things that PhRMA is doing and so many of the problems in providing a prescription drug benefit, but more importantly, what exactly the drug companies are doing to win over people in the body, to win over people in State legislatures.

I would point out, earlier in the evening the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and several others were talking about the drug companies stepping up their efforts to lobby Congress, to lobby State legislatures, even to lobby foreign countries. I know that the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), as I have, have taken bus loads of seniors to Canada to buy prescriptions, same drug, same dosage, same manufacturer, all that, but for one-half, one- third, sometimes one-fourth the price.

The drug companies, as they kick their budgets up, the PhRMA effort to try to get their way all over the world, they plan to spend $72 million for advocacy at the Federal level, mostly in Congress; $4.9 million in lobbying the Food and Drug Administration; $48 million for advocacy at the State level; $17 million in foreign countries and much of that directed to the Canadians because the Canadians stand up to the drug companies and actually sell drugs at decent, affordable prices.

Something jumped out in my State. There is an effort in my State among consumer groups and groups advocating for the elderly and labor organizations to pass a drug benefit not too different from the gentleman from Maine's (Mr. Allen) legislation in the State of Maine.

The drug companies have in their budget, the PhRMA budget, according to the New York Times of Sunday, $15.8 million to fight ``a union- driven, get-out-the-vote ballot initiative in Ohio,'' which would lower drug prices for people who do not have drug insurance. They are spending that money, one, to keep the issue off the ballot in Ohio. They are going to board of elections after board of elections after board of elections to try to kill the signatures, to try to disqualify and invalidate signatures so they do not get on the ballot; but then, if it does get on the ballot, because hundreds of thousands of Ohioans have already signed the petition, people in both parties in all 88 counties, if it does get on the ballot, the drug companies are going to spend that kind of money to defeat it, even though it is clearly in the best interests of the overwhelming majority of the public.

I wanted to bring that to people's attention, that $15 million is more than both candidates spent running for governor in 2002, $15 million in a State of fewer than 11 million people. It is outrageous to do this. That is why I applaud the efforts of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) and the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), on his leadership, his unparalleled leadership here in the Congress on the issue of a fair media, a diverse media with diverse programming, and a competitive media where a small number of large corporations do not make the decisions about information that the public and our country sees and hears.

As the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) said, it was a 3-2 party line decision, similar to so much of what has happened from the Supreme Court in the year 2000 Presidential election, to vote after vote in this body. The Bush administration, the Bush Federal Communication Commission has thrown sound public interest and market principles out the window, allowing America's biggest companies to decide what you hear, when you hear it, what you see, and, in some ways, what you think.

Without a doubt, when you look at the kind of response that the FCC got to this issue, you can see that it really was back-room politics at its worst, as the gentleman from Maine mentioned, 500,000 postcards and e-mail messages almost uniformly against this rule change. A number of comments were examined by a group, a group called the Future of Music Coalition, a group representing artists from country music to rock and roll, artists that almost everyone in this country listens to. They released a report after examining 10,000 comments at random from the FCC that were made public on its Web site; and 9,065 of these 10,000, unaffiliated with any corporate media these 10,000, and 9,065 said they were opposed to changing the resume. Only 11 individuals wrote in support of the FCC.

So on one side there were 9,065; on the other side 11 people. It was a ratio of 824 to 1. Nonetheless, the three Republican commissioners voted with the 11 rather than 9,065. As I said, 500,000 postcards were received overall, and they were equally uniformly against this rule change.

As we said, it was another back-room deal. It only fuels the public perception that the Bush administration has a policy of giving corporations what they want regardless of consequences to the Nation. Enron writes energy policy for this administration. Wall Street writes Social Security privatization legislation. The insurance companies write Medicare legislation. The drug industry writes legislation overseeing the drug industry. It is issue after issue after issue. The chemical companies and the oil companies write legislation dealing with the environment.

About 2 weeks ago, the group of us who opposed this rule, a group of about 15 Democratic Members of Congress and an Independent, held a news conference, a news conference which, if that many Members of Congress put one on almost always is attended by The New York Times; The Washington Post; the L.A. Times; a couple of networks, AP, Fox, perhaps. A whole group of what we would call the corporate media. And we held this news conference in the middle of the day when the media were not that busy, yet we had zero turnout from those corporate media. Congress Daily, a couple of in-house newspapers around here showed up; but none of the big corporate media, none of the mainstream, quoted- unquote mainstream, generally corporate-owned conservative media in this Nation showed up.

That tells you a little bit about how much press coverage they really want for this. The large corporate media in this country do not really want the public to think about this, do not really want the public to know about this because they are the ones lobbying the FCC, they are the ones contributing to President Bush's campaign, they are the ones that contribute to Republican campaigns and Republican leadership; and they want their way with the FCC. Their way with the FCC is fewer companies, fewer corporations controlling the largest amount of media in this country, 1,200 radio stations owned by one company. The CEO of that company, the leaders of that company, good friends of the President from San Antonio, Texas.

It makes you wonder if the FCC is maybe next week, after this decision, going to change its name to instead of the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, maybe to Furthering Corporate Control. Because furthering corporate control is what they have done. They have clearly acted against the public interest.

I would ask my friends on the other side of the aisle, if they really do believe in competition, if they believe in diversity, if they believe in a competitive leveling of the playing field in America like they say they do, then we should enact legislation undoing this FCC ruling.

I thank my friend from Vermont for his terrific leadership.

That is a very good question, and the answer is, rarely or never. The more detailed answer is lots of discussion about tax cuts, lots of discussion about Laci Peterson, lots of discussion about issues that really do not affect people's lives, but almost no discussion about York Manufacturing in my district, 400 good-paying jobs, closed shop, moved to Mexico. Little discussion about trade policy generally.

In fact, if my colleague will remember, during the NAFTA debate, some of us did some surveys of editorials in this country; and we found that editorial opinion was almost unanimous in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, even though poll after poll after poll showed the majority of the public opposed it. The largest newspaper in the country that opposed NAFTA was the Toledo Blade, a fine newspaper in northwest Ohio, but perhaps the 50th or 60th size newspaper in the country, I am not sure, but clearly not one of the largest newspapers in the country. But that was the largest newspaper that actually opposed NAFTA.

But it is not just the editorial policy. We also did surveys of The Washington Post; and if there is a corporate-controlled medium in this country, it is it;

and The Washington Post op-ed pages were overwhelmingly in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement even though we sent in numerous articles. And to add to that, the Democratic whip, the majority whip, sent a letter to the editor of The Washington Post in those days outlining the number of articles, editorial opinions in support of NAFTA and against NAFTA; and they actually censored his letter to the editor and said we are not going to run that part, we will only run another part.

So it is pretty clear that the editorial page, the other opinion articles, the letters to the editor, and even the news coverage is slanted towards a corporate media, because that is what it is. It is a large corporation. Of course, just like General Motors is a conservative company, they care about their profits, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and all these corporate media are similar.

Well, I come from an area, Ohio, which is a pretty unionized State, but I do not see them there either. My colleague comes from a State that is a little more rural; maybe you would not see it there. You would think you would see it in Ohio, but you do not see it in Ohio. It is pretty clear there are not a lot of labor unions owning newspapers or owning radio stations.

There is a show once a week out of a Cleveland radio station, a small part of this radio station, that talks about unions and has a pro-union moderator. That is the only show I have heard, and that is 1 hour on one station out of 15 stations or so and maybe 20 stations in greater Cleveland. Half of those stations are owned by the President's friend from San Antonio, which is becoming less and less diverse in its programming, more and more single minded, more and more conservative in its politics; and it is continuing to move in that direction.

But little or no discussion about the struggles people have, about unions, about work, about trade policy, about feeding their kids. Few shows devoted to single parents trying to struggle through life. Lots of shows about glamour, lots of shows about the rich, lots of shows about tax cuts; but nothing about the struggles of every day people.

My friend from Vermont mentions the drug companies. Now, the drug companies, how often in the newspapers or in TV or radio shows do we hear, unless maybe they quote one of us, and there are not that many of us talking about that, that the drug industry is the most profitable industry in America for 20 years straight; that they pay the lowest tax rate in America for 20 years straight; that taxpayers do almost half of all the research and development on prescription drugs; that Canada's prices are one-half or one-third what they are in the United States; that we are the only country in the world that does not do something to regulate or lower or try to push down drug prices? Not one story ever, almost never a story about that.

Rarely is there a story about why drugs are cheaper in Canada, what the Canadian Government does. Rarely is there a story about what the French or the British or the Germans or the Japanese or the Israelis do to get drug prices down. There are a lot of advertisements on all those stations about prescription drugs, about arthritis drugs, about asthma drugs, about cholesterol-reducing drugs; and all that stuff is good information for the public, but millions, actually billions, of dollars going into the pockets of these corporations that own the media and few if any stories about how the drug companies really rip off the American public.

When you think about that, all this money coming in to these corporations to advertise, of course they are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. Of course they are not going to expose the drug companies' kind of practices and decision-making. Of course they are not going to talk about 600 lobbyists in this town alone lobbying the United States Congress. Of course they are not going to talk about the $15 million that the drug companies are going to spend in my own State, in one State, to try to kill a ballot issue and to keep it off the ballot. Of course they are not going to do any of this because they are getting so much money from the drug companies.

I do not accuse the media of being sleazy for that. That is probably a good business practice. But what I accuse as sleazy is the way they lobby the FCC and get the three Republicans on the FCC to do their bidding, to do whatever corporate America wants. That is what is outrageous.

So point the finger at the drug industry and some of the media; but more importantly, point the finger at the people on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, who stand by these decisions and do whatever corporate America wants them to.

I thank my friend from California for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased we are considering final passage of this global AIDS legislation. I want to recognize the hard work of Chairman Hyde and his good faith and strong efforts to make this legislation as good as it has become and to especially thank my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), the ranking Democrat on the committee, and the minority and majority staff of the Committee on International Relations and the terrific work that they did. I also want to recognize the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), who has been working on this since her first election and her former and current staff, Michael Riggs and Christos Tsentas.

Last year, almost 3 million people died of AIDS, 2 million died of tuberculosis, and 1 million died of malaria. In this bill, we are responding to this pandemic on a scale that can absolutely make a difference in saving hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of lives. This bill recognizes that the intersection of AIDS and tuberculosis is like the perfect storm, causing the most devastating epidemic since the bubonic plague of the 14th century where 20 million people died. Already, 25 million around the world have died of AIDS, 42 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS, and 1,100 people every day in India die of tuberculosis. This bill begins to recognize that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria represents the best tool that we have to fight three epidemics that kill 6 million people each year.

This is good legislation, but it falls a bit short in a couple of areas. One of those is it limits flexibility so that local governments, local communities, local health departments, local nongovernment organizations are not able to be as flexible and I think as effective as they could be. I hope we can address that in the years ahead. It also fails to take as comprehensive an international approach as many of us hoped it would by underfunding, unfortunately, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. That fund is more flexible, believes in local control, has standards to make sure that the dollars are well spent, and has more accountability than any other kind of aid program. I am hoping we can address that in the future.

Every day we fail to act, Mr. Speaker, thousands die. I am here today to say I am proud we have done something. We have done much.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the

time of the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

Mr. Speaker, in about 3 weeks, the Federal Communications Commission is poised to relax or eliminate some rules that are essential to the maintenance of a free press.

Under long-standing FCC rules, giant media companies are limited as to how much control they can exert over any one medium market or any one medium generally. That is just good, common sense in American competition. But the Bush Federal Communications Commission is about to throw those sound public interest and market soundness principles out the window, allowing some of America's biggest companies to decide what you hear, when you hear it, what you see, and, in large part, what you think.

This decision on the part of the Bush administration smacks of back- room politics at its worst. It is a story of how three commissioners are working with corporate-owned media conglomerates to expand their control over what news the public receives. Already one radio company out of Texas, and the owner happens to be a friend of the President, already owns 1,200 radio stations in this country, including a half dozen, at least a half dozen in almost every city in America. Now, these three commissioners are working with corporate-owned media conglomerates to expand their control over the airwaves; and in the process of their decision, there have been no public meetings, no time for elected officials or outside groups to comment on the proposed changes. That has been the FCC's mode of operation the last couple of years.

What is most outrageous is these ownership rules were established to protect and promote a diversity of viewpoints and to encourage economic competition.

This pending decision only fuels the public's perception that the Bush administration has a policy of giving corporations what they want, regardless of the consequences to the Nation.

The energy industry writes the administration's energy plan, companies like Enron. Chemical companies write environmental law. Chemical companies also write safe drinking water laws. Wall Street writes legislation to privatize Social Security. The drug industry writes legislation for prescription drugs. It is over and over and over. Now, the corporate-owned media companies are writing FCC policies.

The Future of Music Coalition, a group representing artists from country music to rock and roll, released a report yesterday showing staggering public opposition to the Bush rule change. This coalition had volunteers review almost 10,000 comments received from the public that the Federal Communications Commission has made public on its Web site. There are an estimated 12,000 comments the FCC received that have not yet been reviewed. But of the 10,000 that have been reviewed, 9,065 citizens unaffiliated with any corporate media, 9,065 said they were opposed to changing this rule. Only 11 individuals wrote into the FCC in support of changing the rule. That is an 824 to 1 ratio.

The public is rightly skeptical of this back-room deal. What the FCC leadership does not understand is that they should be accountable to the very people whose opinions they are simply dismissing, Mr. Speaker.

If the FCC wants to dispute these numbers, then delay the vote, then schedule field hearings, then listen to people, then give this rule change the level of public scrutiny then that all ruling changes like that that affect the public interest deserve.

But if the FCC moves forward in relaxing ownership restrictions, this important agency loses its credibility with American consumers, and American radio and TV listeners and viewers. It violates the very principles on which it was established.

Interestingly, Mr. Speaker, yesterday a group of more than a dozen Democrats held a news conference to discuss corporate control of media. Almost always in news conferences like this media will show up. Yesterday when we held this news conference to discuss the corporate control of media, there was no corporate-owned media there. There was Congress Daily, and there was a small newspaper from Puerto Rico. No New York Times. No Washington Post. No networks. No Fox News. None of the large conglomerates that simply do not want to shine a light on some of the mischief they are creating as owners, as a few large owners of these large media conglomerates.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, on June 7 the Federal Communications Commission's vote to undermine ownership restrictions will take place. We will probably find out on that June 2 date that the Federal Communications Commission just might change its name from FCC, Federal Communications Commission, to FCC, Furthering Corporate Control. That is what this issue is about, a few companies owning large numbers of radio stations, large numbers of television stations, telling the American public only what those corporate interests want them to know.

Mr. Speaker, Taiwan--along with nations across the globe--has been struck by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). On April 26, the first Taiwanese citizen died from the virus. SARS has resulted in hundreds of deaths worldwide and hospitalized thousands. WHO measures have been critical to containing the spread of SARS, and to providing nations with accurate and timely information to better combat this world health threat.

Despite the dangers SARS poses to 23 million Taiwanese citizens, the WHO delayed Taiwan's effort to contain the spread of SARS, placing the health of the entire nation in jeopardy. This crisis highlights the urgency surrounding Taiwan's obtaining observer status in the WHO at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland beginning next week.

I urge my colleagues to read the following op-ed by President Chen Shui-bian that recently appeared in the Washington Post.

[From the Washington Post, May 9, 2003]

Help Taiwan Fight SARS

(By Chen Shui-bian)

The outbreak and spread of severe acute respiratory

syndrome, or SARS, has brought illness, death and economic

peril to Asia and the rest of the world. It has also drawn

attention to Taiwan's exclusion from the World Health

Organization. If there was ever a time for my country to be

allowed to join the WHO, it is now.

As Taiwan's democratically elected president, my first and

foremost obligation is to the people of Taiwan. When SARS

first appeared in Taiwan in March, our health system

responded quickly and effectively. As a result, Taiwan

initially achieved a record of zero mortality, zero community

transmission and zero transmission abroad of SARS. But

despite our efforts, another outbreak occurred in late April.

We have taken strict measures in response, and are working

day and night to contain the disease.

Throughout this health crisis, my government has acted in

the best interest of our people and of foreign nationals

living in and visiting Taiwan. At no time has my

administration suppressed information about the disease. Our

press has reported freely on SARS. More important, our

officials know that they are accountable to the people, both

morally and at the ballot box. Whatever problems arise for

Taiwan, we will solve them according to the highest standards

of medicine, government accountability and human compassion.

I also have an obligation to the world. Taiwan is a nation

of 23 million people and a major trading partner for many

countries. What happens in Taiwan affects many millions more

around the world. For that reason, Taiwan immediately offered

to work with the WHO in combating SARS. Unfortunately, we

were rebuffed. However, in response to the most recent rise

in the number of cases, and for the first time in decades,

two experts from the WHO arrived in Taiwan last week. I

welcome this assistance and have directed my government and

called on my people to cooperate fully with them.

The WHO's decision to send these experts to Taiwan has

great significance. It demonstrates that Taiwan is

indispensable to international public health. But it also

suggests that cooperation between the WHO and Taiwan should

not be left to ad hoc arrangements.

Despite my country's advanced health system, staffed by

doctors and nurses educated in highly respected institutions

at home and abroad, and despite a strong desire to

participate in the WHO, Taiwan is denied membership or even

observer status in the organization. As a consequence, our

epidemiologists are still unable to gain prompt access to

information, such as samples of the virus, that could help

our scientists learn about the disease and treat patients.

Nevertheless, we have tried to provide information to

international organizations to ensure that Taiwan can make

the maximum contribution to solving this health problem.

The effort to understand and control SARS continues. Viral

experts seek answers to important questions. Doctors and

health professionals on the front line of the battle against

SARS need as much information as possible to be able to deal

with the disease. Moreover, like the WHO, international

health officials need as much data as

possible about SARS and the way it behaves in different

environments and among different populations.

Taiwan, with a population larger than those of three-

quarters of the countries of the world, is a piece of a

global puzzle that experts need to understand to cope with

the virus. Taiwan has long wanted not only to benefit from

the WHO's expertise but also to share the responsibility that

all countries have to global public health. Many health care

professionals around the world have expressed their support

for Taiwan's admission to the WHO as an observer. We are

grateful.

We hope that at the WHO meeting on May 19, this important

organization will invite Taiwan to be an observer. Taiwan's

people should not be excluded from efforts to defeat SARS.

Nor should the rest of the world be denied the important

contribution Taiwan can and wants to make to global health.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the Republican leader of the House, began his talk by saying, a victory for working Americans last week. It is hard to think it was a victory for working Americans when we have over 1 million people who are unemployed, who are receiving unemployment compensation, and 36,000 of those in Ohio, their benefits expire on May 31; and this Republican Congress and this President refused to extend their unemployment benefits.

Last November many of us in this House, many of us on the Democratic side, called for an extension of unemployment benefits for the 23,000 workers in Ohio and 1.1 million-or-so workers nationwide whose benefits were set to expire at the end of the year. After bowing to public outrage, the White House begrudgingly gave congressional Republicans the green light to help the unemployed. They were reluctant; but because of the pressure they received from people in my State of Ohio and across the country from unemployed workers and people who care about unemployed workers, Republicans could not ignore the expiring of unemployment benefits any longer.

It is 5 months later, and we are going down that same road again. Several days ago, House Republicans passed President Bush's tax cut that gives millionaires an average tax cut of $93,000. If you make $1 million a year, you get a tax cut of $93,000. Fewer than half the people in my State, or about half the people in my State of Ohio, will get less than $200 from that same tax cut bill; but the 1 percent wealthiest people whose income averages $968,000 a year will get a $93,000 tax break. That is twice as much as the median total income of people in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I supported a Democratic alternative that extends unemployment benefits to help families struggling through the Bush recession and to provide real economic stimulus by putting the money in the pockets of those who will spend it, those who are unemployed, those who need it most, those who are most likely to put that money into the economy to create economic activity to create jobs. Our plan provides tax stimulus for small businesses and manufacturing that is the core of Ohio's economy and offers immediate relief to States like Ohio, almost all the 50 States, which are drowning in red ink, help to maintain Medicaid, avoid further job losses and cuts in critical programs, and prevent tax increases, so that States do not feel forced to raise taxes as most of them, Republican and Democratic Governors alike, are doing.

Did the House Republican leadership embrace this commonsense plan? No. Did the Republicans vote to extend unemployment benefits for 1 million Americans whose benefits are running out and who cannot find a job as hard as they are willing to work, one of the best ways to spur economic growth? No. Did the Republicans extend unemployment benefits? No. Did the Republicans give assistance to cash-strapped States all over the country that are raising taxes, cutting health care, and raising tuition rates on middle-class families? No. And why is the Republican answer to all of our economic problems always, always tax cuts for the rich?

The President's tax cut plan echoes the 2001 President's tax cut plan in other ways. The 2001 tax cut delivered 40 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of the people in this country. They marketed it as a tax break for ordinary folks, and now they are saying it again. Keep in mind, half of the tax cut goes to people whose average income is $968,000 a year. The typical family, though, gets a tax break of about $200 next year; but families with incomes of $1 million get $93,000.

Two years ago, the President got his tax cut through Congress, which he claimed would create jobs. Two years later, today, we have lost since then 1.7 million jobs, and now they are saying we should do it again.

The latest unemployment statistics show 360,000 Ohioans are out of work, 33,000 more than were reported in January.

Ohio has lost a quarter of a million jobs since President Bush took office. President Bush has the worst job creation record, averaging a loss of 68,000 jobs a month, of any President in the last 58 years. Every month that President Bush has been in office, we have seen a decrease in the number of jobs

in this country. We have lost 563 jobs for every working hour of every working day since President Bush took office.

During that time period in President Clinton's first term, nearly 11 million jobs were created, including nearly a half million manufacturing jobs. Yet we have seen over 1 million manufacturing jobs vanish since President Bush moved into the White House.

Over the next decade, 27 percent of the tax cut, about the share that goes to the bottom 90 percent of the population, would go to these very high-income families. Despite these economic statistics, President Bush will not ask Congress to do what his father asked Congress a dozen years ago. In the wake of the recession of the early 1900s, they extended unemployment benefits; the same thing that President Bush and House Republicans should do.

Mr. Speaker, recently President Bush traveled to my home State of Ohio to sell his tax cuts. He went to a manufacturing company of I believe the largest Republican contributor in Ohio to extol the value of his tax cuts. He met with the executives of that company who will enjoy large tax cuts. He did not talk specifically about what individual workers who make 20 and 30 and 40 and $50,000 a year will get, but understand as the President came to Ohio and talked about this tax cut, his 500-plus-billion-dollar tax cut, that half of that tax cut will go to people whose average income is $968,000 a year. So half of that tax cut will go to people who on the average make about $1 million a year.

The President now has shifted from talking about the tax cut because that has fallen on deaf ears, even on the ears of a Republican Senator in Ohio who has said ``no'' to this tax cut, thinking it throws the budget way out of balance, thinking that the tax cuts go far too much to the wealthiest citizens and not enough to middle-income Americans. The President now has shifted his talk to talk about jobs, saying that the Bush economic plan is not so much about tax cuts but is about job creation. What he does not say is since he took office, we have lost 2.6 million jobs in this country, most of them manufacturing jobs. We have lost manufacturing jobs literally every single month of the Bush presidency, something that has never happened since we have been keeping records on those kinds of things. There has been negative economic growth and negative economic job activity since the President has taken office. That has not happened in the last 50 years. At the same time the President's similar kind of tax cut which passed his first year in office is not paying the kind of benefits that he hoped. He 2 years ago asked Congress, asked the American people for a similar economic package to the one he asks for today. Yet today he is asking for it again even though we have lost 2.6 million jobs and we have lost manufacturing jobs in this country every single month since the President took office. The President wants to give tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens in this country, leaving a few hundred dollars for people making 40 or 50 or 60

or $70,000 a year, giving 10 to $15,000 to people making $1 million a year.

At the same time the President wants to restrict one of the best bipartisan both job creation and poverty programs that this country has had rewarding work, and that is the earned income tax credit. The earned income tax credit was passed by a Democratic Congress with a Republican President in 1975, expanded in the eighties by a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, and now President Bush wants to restrict the earned income tax credit. People making 20, 25, $30,000 a year under the earned income tax credit will get about $1,000 a year more back in their taxes than they would get otherwise. It is a way to reward work. These are people that have full-time jobs, often without health care, often single parents, people that are struggling that need that kind of help. So the President wants to give huge tax cuts to people making $1 million a year and take away much of the tax benefits under the earned income tax credit that people making 20, 25, $30,000 a year make.

Get this, though. The IRS now has decided to change in the last 5 years, under Republican leadership in this House and Senate, to change the frequency by which they audit tax returns. If you are making $30,000 a year and you have filed for the earned income tax credit, one out of 64 of you will be audited by the IRS. But if you make $100,000, only one out of 120 of you will be audited by the IRS. If you are even higher income than that, then only one out of 400 of you will be audited by the IRS. So the IRS is going after people making 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a year while allowing people by and large to skate if they are making a half million or a million dollars a year. Then on top of that the President wants to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in this country.

The largest newspaper in my district, the Akron Beacon Journal, had this to say about the earned income tax credit this morning: ``The President wants Americans to spend their money to boost the economy. He wants to create jobs. The earned income tax credit delivers on both fronts.'' That is the importance of the earned income tax credit, of keeping it in place, of keeping the eligibility standards where they are, of encouraging more people to file for the earned income tax credit. That will help stimulate the economy. That goes with the general Democratic plan on economic stimulus, not simply giving tax breaks to the richest people in the country hoping that some of the money trickles down for job creation. That clearly has not worked. Instead, the Democratic plan through extending unemployment, through middle-class tax breaks, through helping small businesses, through economic stimulus of building highways and bridges and all that, that is what will put people back to work.